A knitter who started a(nother) blog about the experience of being diagnosed with adult ADD. Expect lots of random bulleted lists and some conversations with a bit more weight.

Can I just clock out now?

I’m tired. I’m just tired of it all. Is my shift over? I can go somewhere and knit and drink iced mango black tea and have delicious food. Does such a place exist?

2020 isn’t even here and I’m over it. My therapist said I had good sleep hygiene because I explained that I can’t stand the noise of the television after S goes to bed. I can tolerate Chris Hayes in his podcast, Why is This Happening, and that’s all I got. Even shows I’d love to watch and catch up on (Counterpart, the latest seasons of True Detective and American Gods) are falling to the side. No news, no television. Just a book and some knitting. I did get a birthday gift from my Amazon wish list in the form of the complete series of Daria.

Intersectionality. Go Google that word, the real meaning.

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are out here bribing and lying, committing fraud, for their kids. They, and other parents, are paying more money to get their kids into a college than what the degree will cost to obtain.

And, they used more than one form of privilege because they took advantage of setups and accommodations (quiet rooms for one person, for example) that are offered to those who have difficulties with traditional learning environments. I’ll say “obtain” and not “earn” because no.

What if they were Black women doing this for their kids? They’d be called everything under the sun but their given names.

That “what if” is a question I ask myself every time a white person commits a crime and there is no rational explanation for it and/or there is a rational explanation and they get a sentence that is in no way proportionate to their crime.

Paul Manafort

Whoever burned down Black Wall Street. (Stop telling Black people to invest in their community. We did that and look what happened. Dismantle the constructs that are keeping equal footing from us.)

Y’alls bum-ass president.

Susan Smith. Remember her? I remember my 5th grade teacher having a talk with the class because a white woman killed her kids and blamed it on a Black man who did not exist. My teacher had to (and probably was more than willing…thank you, Mrs. Bush) take time from a lesson to talk with us because she knew us. She knew her students and what our families talk about at home.

I’m not even going to go into a long list because history will have us here for eternity. I’m not even exaggerating on that one. White people who do not recognize their privilege will forever fuck up and not give half a rat fart as to the damage they cause.

This has been on my mind for a minute, but I wanted to post about what people say versus what I hear. There are still empty phrases and repetition on the same tired talking points. I planned to post weeks ago, but I honestly felt like there was no point. If the same people are going to see it and respond and take it to heart while the ones who need to read it think I’m a bully or compare me to a Nazi (I was actually compared to a Nazi), what is it for? Then, I think and hope that someone shares it with that family member who is known for being problematic, or that coworker who just can’t grasp the complaints that HR brings to their attention.

When you say “a”, I hear “B”

A: I wish my hair could do that!B: I want to change up my hair like you can, and I’m clearly not giving any thought to the political implications and social restrictions placed upon said hair.

A: I’m listening and learning (and offering no action).B: Do you have a bracelet I can wear? I don’t know what to say to make you think I’m actually trying, but I’ll say this because it sounds like I’m trying and I don’t have to do anything.

A: We’re all one race, the human race.B: I don’t like to and/or have difficulty acknowledging the differences between myself and someone else, let alone in a respectful way.

A: I don’t see color.B: It’s easier for me to focus on any similarities we might have because, otherwise, I’d have to face my privilege and I don’t know how to sit with that.

A: Let’s let social media be social.B: I like social media when it’s sectioned off and segregated in the manner in which I prefer. I’ll promote my business and post pics of everything in my life, but I don’t want to see your views. To paraphrase Grace Anna Farrow, keep it all offline then.

A: Both sides do [fill in the blank].B: I can’t bear to reconcile that the position in an argument with which I sympathize the most is wrong and responsible for unnecessary strife. Therefore, I have to call out whatever tiny imperfection I see in the opposing view, no matter how irrelevant.

A: It’s not feminism if it’s not intersectional.B: I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I just heard someone say this and repeated it, never bothering to educate myself on what intersectionality actually means. I can’t actually tell you the name of the person who defined the term.

Just so you know, Liz has been highlighting a different nonwhite woman every day of this Women’s History Month. Excuse me, Women of Color History Month. Check it out. Learn you some stuff.

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4 comments

The Harvard crap–and it is most definitely crap, but completely unsurprising crap–coincides with some fool on IG yesterday telling me that racism is “not as bad as the media makes it out” and that “black people get into college just for being black.” And re-reading the Dennis Prager article in which he tries so hard to prove that white privilege is a myth. I don’t know if you can roll your eyes hard enough for them to get stuck, but I nearly got there while reading that nonsense again. Research is not always a pleasant thing to do.

So here I am, reading your post, with the truth of it it blaring like a Klaxon, and I wonder how many generations will my DNA have to pass through before any of my descendants can experience this sort of thing as the exception rather than the rule…and not because the melanin’s been diluted away by then.

I wish I could turn to knitting like I used to, but some days picking up those needles is a reminder of how deeply people are invested in maintaining the status quo.

(Thanks for the mention. With Dad’s current health issues, I’m quite behind on posting, but I’ll catch up with them and also the Yes, You See Color Blog Posts.)

Chris Hayes had a great piece on All In last night about the stupidity of white people. It was awesome. Really. I wanted to shout out the window – uber rich white idiots… are you over yourselves yet… but, no – they are so not, nor will they ever be.

Paul Manafort…. don’t even get me started. I am hopeful that today’s female judge will give him a bigger and consecutively slice of justice. I raged about it on my blog last Friday and not one person commented at all on it. You know… that “ignore the elephant in the room” thing we white people do so well. And, that pissed me off even more.

All of this. So much of the daily fresh white nonsense is about mediocre white people avoiding any reckoning with their own mediocrity. Imagine having to acknowledge that you made absolutely nothing of what you have happen. The myth of meritocracy must be preserved at all costs because then, what do you have?

Engaging so much with all this stuff has made me physically ill. The emotional and mental drain are always there, but now I am in bed 10 hours every night. My body is forcing me to tune out. But I’m so grateful for your posts and Liz’s Women of Color History Month posts, and so many others voices that are mainly letting me know I’m not insane or alone.